


Sweetest In the Gale Is Heard

by Toft



Category: Pegasus - Robin McKinley
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Minor Character Death, Politics, Sequel, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 08:19:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13050138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toft/pseuds/Toft
Summary: After the roc's prophecy threatens to separate them forever, Sylvi works to get Ebon back and save the kingdom.





	Sweetest In the Gale Is Heard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Morbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/gifts).



> I hope you like this, Morbane! This kind of got away from me, and I hope it's enjoyable. Thank you for all the work you do modding this amazing challenge.

It had been three days since Fthoom had revealed the history of the roc’s curse, since the pegasi had left. Since Ebon had left. Sylvi had spent the first day crying; the second day, a tentative knock on her door announced a visitor. She had already sent away her mother, Ahathin, Garren, her mother again. Her father had not come, but deep down, she knew that was a kindness. She wouldn’t be able to send him away; he was giving her time to pull herself together before she had to see him 

“Go away,” Sylvi yelled. She knew she was behaving in a way ill-befitting a princess. She didn’t care. Her heart bled inside her, and the world seemed grey and empty without Ebon – and she might, she might never see him again…

She was aware of someone entering her room, the weight on the bed as they settled. Too miserable even to object, she simply ignored them. After a little while, Ahathin said, “Your highness. Sylvi.”

Shocked out of tears that her maids had allowed him entry to her bedroom, Sylvi sat up and hiccuped. He was holding out to her a steaming cup of something. She took it automatically, then sipped, and found she was parched. It was spiced cider, her favourite, but only for special occasions, and the knowledge that he must have wheedled it out of the cooks made her sit up and make an effort.

“You’re scaring your friends,” he said gently. _And giving Fthoom’s friends exactly what they want_ , she thought, despairing.

“It isn’t _fair_ ,” she choked, tears threatening to break out again, even though her eyes burned and she thought there couldn’t be any moisture left in her body.

“You’re right,” Ahathin said, unexpectedly. “It is a great injustice, and, I think, a danger to the kingdom to separate you.”

Gratitude almost threatened to shatter Sylvi’s composure again. Fthoom’s findings seemed so incontrovertible, even though she knew that _somehow_ they were wrong, that there had been a misunderstanding, but she remembered the look of sad surrender on her father’s face. She thought all the adults would tell her to resign herself to it. She’d been unfair to Ahathin.

“I’m – I’m sorry,” she said. She took another sip of her cider. She was conscious, suddenly, that she needed a bath, that her head hurt abominably, and she was starved.

“You are not so short of allies, Princess Sylviianel,” Ahathin said. “Could you eat?”

She nodded, and he left the room, returning within minutes with a plate of bread, cheese, sliced apple, pickles, and cured meats that he must have had waiting outside the room. She dug in, sense and strength returning slowly.

“What is – what is happening?”

Ahathin nodded his approval. “Fthoom is in disgrace but his faction is in the ascendancy within the Guild. Your father is adamant that he is banned from the court for his insult to you and to the pegasus royal family, but his advisors are suggesting that the king's position is fragile. There is a rumour in the city that two rocs have been sighted in the Starclouds. The queen and crown prince are preparing a war party that will leave in three days.”

Despair threatened to overwhelm her again as fear for her mother and Danacor gripped her heart. What could she do? The whole court would be in turmoil over the threat to the kingdom. If she made a fuss about being separated from Ebon, she’d just be dismissed as a selfish little girl. She swallowed hard, and tried to think. Ahathin was giving her a report as he would an adult; she wanted to live up to his opinion of her. He was her adviser. Well, she should trust him to advise her.

“What do you suggest?”

“I would suggest that your highness offer her expertise in local magics and her skill in logistics to the organization of the border defenses and the war party,” Ahathin said, “And request to review Fthoom’s findings. Your father’s position is that the safety of the kingdom comes first, but that the Pegasus-human alliance is integral to the kingdom. That should be your position too.”

She nodded slowly. The important thing was to appear not to prioritize her own feelings.

“If you seem incapacitated by Ebon’s… temporary absence, Fthoom’s party may argue that bears out their argument,” Ahathin added.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Sylvi choked, cursed tears rising up once again. “I’m stronger and better with him. It’s not the same thing.”

“I know,” Ahathin said. She looked at him properly. He looked older, sadder, than she remembered. Had that change really been in the last few days? Or had it been since before she went to the Pegasus lands? For the first time it occurred to her that he had been fighting on her behalf, perhaps for some time, and she felt ashamed of her collapse.

“Is there anything else?” she said.

“Your highness…”

“Ahathin.”

Ahathin looked sheepish. She wondered if he’d ever call her by her name without prompting.

“Sylvi… it’s clear that you have been exercising a certain amount of discretion about what you experienced with the Pegasi, no doubt with good reason.” Ahathin appeared to be choosing his words carefully. “But if you have not opened your heart to your father, now is the time to do so.”

He was right, Sylvi knew. Things were already about as bad as they could be, after all. She had to tell him, if not about her visions, that she had been able to understand the other Pegasi in their kingdom.

“He’s so busy…”

“He will make time for this. If you will permit me, I will take a message.”

Alarmed, Sylvi swung her legs down off the bed, almost knocking over her now-empty plate.

“I’m not –”

“The meeting will probably not be until tomorrow.” Ahathin’s eyes creased in a smile. “But in the mean time…”

“I’ll get up,” Sylvi said, firm with resolve. “And then I’ll help. And I’ll talk to my father.”

“I will leave you, then,” Ahathin said, standing.

“Ahathin – thank you,” Sylvi said. He bowed wordlessly, and left. Sylvi was left in her messy room, her head still pounding, but clearer. Now that she had a clear sense of direction, it was easier not to listen to the part of her that still wailed for Ebon. Where was he? What was he doing? Was he feeling like half of his heart had been ripped away?

She set her lip, poured herself a mug of water from the jug Ahathin had left, and rang her bell for a bath. Then she began to set her room in order. 

***

She felt almost herself again when Ahathin came to take her to her father. They were standing in the antechamber to his private rooms before she realized that it was odd that a servant hadn’t been sent instead. The reason became obvious when Ahathin rapped gently on the door, and her father opened it immediately, and pulled her inside.

“My darling,” he said, when he saw her. “How are you?”

Without thinking, Sylvi threw herself into his arms. He held her tight, and kissed her head. Then she pulled back with an effort, and packed away the tears that wanted to break out.

“I don’t know how much Ahathin has briefed you,” he said. “I’m supposed to have a speaker present if we discuss your bond with Ebon. We only have fifteen minutes before someone becomes suspicious. Speak quickly, dearest.”

Sylvi took a deep breath, and tried to organize her thoughts. But when she began to speak, the words tumbled out of her.

She told him that she had spoken with the Pegasi – with all of them. She told him about Redfora and Oraan, the princess and pegasus who could speak with each other, but made it sound as she had heard of them from the shaman Hibeehea, not seen them in a vision. She did not tell him about the Dreaming Sea. She did not tell him about what she had seen in the caves. She did tell him, stammering with nervousness at the last, about what Hibeehea had said about the human magics. How it made the shamans ill – how it eroded their memory of language, how she could feel it falling like a thick mist into the spaces in her mind where there had been voices and understanding. How she was no longer sure if she could hear any pegasus but Ebon.

She spoke as quickly as she could, partly to outpace the minutes, and partly because she was afraid if she paused for breath she would lose heart at the grave look on her father’s face. When she ran out of words, she was frightened at how old he looked. He put his hand on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry that this has fallen on you, Sylvi. I wish that Lrrianay – but I would have done the same. You realize that if I tell the magicians this now, they will say that the Pegasi have clouded your mind, or that you are lying to get Ebon back?”

Sylvi opened her mouth to protest, and her father held up his hand.

“I know that neither of those things are true. What you are saying confirms what I have suspected – what your mother and I have both suspected – for many years. Your success in communicating them is… everything we dreamed of.”

“I should have told you before,” she said, in a very small voice. She swallowed back tears again.

“Perhaps it would have been better,” her father nodded. “But this shaman – Hibeehea – put you in a difficult position. We all did.” He reached out and took her hand, suddenly, and held it tightly. “We were naïve, Sylvi – we didn’t anticipate something like this. But we knew it would be hard for you. And we did it anyway. We sent you there, hoping that this would happen, knowing that it might change you forever. And now Danacor and your mother are going to fight, and I must give every waking moment to preparing their way, so that they have the best possible chance of coming back alive. And yet this is important too. I don’t know what to do.”

For a moment, Sylvi saw her own rage, her fear, reflected on her father’s face, and it dumbfounded her. All her agony over Ebon felt almost selfish, now, with her father’s fear for her mother and Danacor so naked. _I suppose this is what growing up is like_ , she thought, and it was a weight inside her, a different kind of heaviness from her grief over Ebon. She squeezed her father’s hand.

“I can help,” she said, setting her jaw. “Give me some of the planning. I have a secretary.”

Her father smiled, but it was a sad expression.

“Oh, my little Sylvi.” He stroked her cheek. “I feel as if I looked away, and looked back, and you had aged ten years.”

Sylvi felt a tear slide down her nose. She wiped it away angrily.

“You’d better go,” she said. “Fifteen minutes.”

“Yes,” her father said. He drew himself up, and then he was the king again. He opened the door. “Ahathin? You’re here? Good.”

He nodded at Sylvi. “I’ll tell Therin that he can delegate some of the supplies and logistics to you.” He leaned down. “Don’t give up,” he whispered, and brushed her hair from her face. Then he shut the door, and Sylvi and Ahathin were in the corridor, alone.

***

The speed with which a pile of papers were delivered to her office by a hollow-eyed apprentice left shame clinging to Sylvi like an oil slick. While she’d been crying in bed, there was all this work to do. Ahathin’s hand on her shoulder – fleeting, but warm – steadied her. But even though she was quickly engrossed in cross-checking troop numbers with her own records of the sparse settlements in the foothills, calculating supplies against local yields and future tax rebates, she would catch herself correcting maps from memory of how they looked from the sky. Her misery at Ebon’s absence was settling from a tearing pain into a kind of awful numb ache. The fourth or fifth time she rubbed her palms against her eyes to relieve it, Ahathin said, “Your highness. Time for a break.”

She ate something that was put in front of her, went to her room, and slept fitfully. She woke in the early hours to moonlight streaming through her window, and with a wild leap in her throat, she ran to it, sure that he would be there; but he was not, and she cried as if her heart could break all over again.

The next day was much the same. Her mother came by her office to give her a kiss on her forehead, a clasp on the shoulder, and an encouraging whisper, barely there before she was gone again, leaving Sylvi grasping for the tatters of her self-control.

“I need to go outside,” she said, barely looking at where she was going, and she pushed back from her desk.

She went to the training field; she had in mind that she could spar with someone, but of course everyone was busy. Talia, one of Swordmaster Diamon’s assistants, had a pile of swordbelts next to her which she was cleaning and repairing. She was a tall woman with a weathered face, farmer-born, a sharp archer, and she paid no attention to birth or rank for the raw recruits who came under her care. Sylvi pulled up an upturned bucket to sit on, grabbed a rag from the box and took a few belts from the pile to work on. Talia nodded to her.

“We miss that lad,” she said. It took Sylvi a moment to realize that she meant Ebon. “Foolishness,” she continued, rubbing linement into the belt as if it had personally offended her. “You’ll have him back afore you know it.”

Sylvi bent over her belt and bit her lip. She didn’t know what was worse; the sudden absence of the Pegasi in the hallways, the furtive looks she got across courtyards and along hallways, the careful way her father’s ministers _didn’t_ mention anything that had transpired in the last week – as if Ebon had never even _existed_ – or this blunt sympathy. What she wanted was to get away from everyone, to go entirely unnoticed, but that was impossible here. If she could dress as a common soldier, sneak away in her mother’s army – but she’d be recognised. Her height would make her stand out. She suppressed a wry, frustrated grimace at the idea of herself standing shoulder-high to the other soldiers, pulled out of the line.

“Ye wanted some sparring?” Talia continued. “Everyone’s working on the preparations.”

“Yes,” Sylvi said, barely containing her sarcasm. Talia was kind, but she did tend to state the obvious. Although it was a relief not to be Princess Sylviianel, but merely Sylvi the sword trainee. She already felt she could breathe more easily. “I’m glad to help with this. It’s good to be outside.”

“Plenty of young things in from out of town,” Talia said, a sly note in her voice. Sylvi glanced up at her, and was startled to receive a grin and a broad wink. “Plenty of different kinds of sparring to take peoples minds of their troubles.”

Sylvi stared. Of all the inappropriate suggestions –

“I’m not really,” she said. “I don’t, um.”

“Time I was your age, I’d tumbled many a lad and lass,” Talia grinned. “But maybe you’d be more choosy, being a princess.”

“Oh,” said Sylvi, taken aback, and slightly offended. “No, not – I’m just, I don’t really want that. With anyone.”

Talia shrugged one-shouldered, and tossed a finished and gleaming belt on the pile. “Ah, well, takes all sorts. But there’s more than one way to swing a sword, as my grandmother used to say.”

Sylvi wasn’t entirely convinced she knew what that meant or whether it was the kind of thing she’d want her grandmother to say to her.

General Ptarth called Talia to the gate shortly afterwards to consult her, and Sylvi, her fingers sore, guilty at being away from her proper station, stole away back into the palace. As she hurried through the corridors, she couldn’t quite push the conversation from her mind. Like her brothers, she had sat through the excruciating Talk about Not Pursuing The Servants Even If You Think They Might Be Interested, and, in liasons with peers who could turn them down, how not to catch a bun in the oven, or cause one; and there was the understanding, of course, that marriage was a different matter, something they owed to the kingdom.

Her brothers had flings of one sort or another, she knew. So did other girls her age, if the idle talk among her maidservants and in the training halls was anything to go by. But Sylvi simply didn’t… she had Ebon. Had had Ebon.

She stopped outside her office door, and pressed her hot forehead to the stone wall, as his absence welled up inside her again like a sickness. She _couldn’t._ She _needed_ him.

She pinched her wrist until her eyes stung, then set her jaw, opened the door, and went back to her desk.

***

General Ptarth himself came by her office the next night, the clearing of his throat like a stick knocking on stone.

“Oh!” Sylvi said, startled, and unsure of the proper greeting. She stood up, but Ptarth waved her down. Ahathin had gone out some time earlier; how long had he been gone? She rubbed her forehead. Her clerk looked up, a flash of frightened eyes, then bent his head again to his triplicate copies of her reports.

“Came to take a look at my new adviser,” Ptarth said, with little ceremony. Sylvi had only exchanged greetings with him at state events, but she’d always had a liking for him, if only because he always seemed as uncomfortable at the dinners as she felt. “You caught a mistake my fop of a lieutenant missed. Saved us four days of marching, easy. Two days to the bridge, two days backtracking to the next ford. How did you know that bridge was out?”

“There was the pox in the area,” Sylvi said, quaking with relief inside that this was a question she could answer without lying outright. She had noticed that the bridge was out on a flight with Ebon; but she had recalled the report of a local healing witch that she had been run out of the settlement after the deaths of several of her charges. There was nothing that she could have done with the pox, of course, but her pain was stark enough in the report that Sylvi had remembered it. “The spring floods took out the bridge, and there was no one left to repair it. I had reported it to the engineer corps, but…” she trailed off. Ptarth nodded, a glint in his eyes. Sylvi had a feeling that the corps of engineers would be hearing from him in the near future.

“Aye,” he said. “Good work, your highness. More like this, and the army will second you as long as your parents can spare you.” She smiled. Her head felt funny. She was conscious of Ptarth’s hard stare.

“You,” the general said to the clerk. It took him a moment to realize that the general was speaking to him, and then he practically fell out of his chair. “How long has the princess been at this desk?”

“Uh…” the clerk stammered, “Since… since breakfast? She went out once. For the necessaries.” He snapped his mouth shut, looking appalled.

“Up,” Ptarth said to Sylvi. “You’ve a future as an officer. But not if you can’t pace yourself.”

“We’re at war!” Sylvi said, stung.

“The more reason to do your best work,” Ptarth said grimly. “You’re near done in. Up with you.”

Sylvi pushed her creaking body out of the chair. Her eyes were dust-dry, her stomach a shrunken, aching thing. She fought the urge to scowl. Buried in maps and equations, she almost didn’t notice the misery that would overwhelm her if she stopped. Even the general’s compliment – which would have made her glow, a week ago – didn’t seem to matter. She felt lost.

“That Fthoom’s a fool,” the general said suddenly. “Now of all times, all my aerial scouts gone, even if we could bare understand them half the time. Lady – can you speak the boy from here?”

Sylvi blinked at him. “I – no, my lord. Sir.”

Ptarth growled, a curse forming on his lips before he seemed to remember where he was. Sylvi stared at him in mute gratitude. It was the first time someone had mentioned the missing Pegasi as a problem for themselves, rather than for her.

“It’s as if – there’s nothing, where he used to be, sir,” Sylvi blurted out, and bit her lip. “I can’t hear him. I don’t know where he is.”

He looked at her for a moment, his eyes kind.

“Another piece of advice,” he said, and clapped her on the shoulder. “Get drunk.”

***

Sylvi huddled further back into her hood and sipped gingerly at her drink. It was thin, weak ale, worse even than the watered-down wine they made her drink at court events, with an astringent aftertaste. She still wasn’t entirely sure why she had come here, but she had walked out into the courtyard, and the gate had been open, and she just hadn’t been able to bear the idea of the canteen, people _looking_ at her. So she had pulled her hood up and just… walked out, half expecting to be stopped. Nobody had stopped her.

The bar was getting louder, laughter and shouted conversations almost drowning out the fiddler in the corner, but nobody paid any attention to her. She caught the eye of the busy waitress, and eventually had a bowl of gristly stew slid in front of her, which she wolfed down. The night got darker outside. Sylvi grew slowly used to the idea that she was alone, without the shadow of guards that had been with her as long as she could remember. It was a strange feeling, but familiar, a sort of loosening in the back of her mind. It took her a few minutes to realize that she felt a little like she had in the kingdom of the Pegasi.

There was a commotion at the back, near a raised platform with no tables which she now realized was a stage; all at once there was a raucous cry as a woman with the kind of figure her mother would have called _prominent_ strutted out onto the stage with a wave and a broad grin for the loudest patrons in the front. She was in _that_ kind of bar, Sylvi realized, belatedly. The crowd around her was packed; there was nothing for it but to sit through the performance and slip away afterwards. She braced herself for it, with a certain amount of curiosity. Talia’s words still sat uneasily at the back of her mind. Why _wasn’t_ she interested in the kind of thing that the people around her obviously were?

The woman on the stage was wearing a gauzy, shimmering garment that concealed almost nothing, and her hair was braided back with coloured ribbons in a style Sylvi had never seen before but which rang a bell of familiarity in her mind. The noise of the music redoubled as a drummer and a piper joined the fiddler. They wove their melodies together over a hard, pounding rhythm that Sylvi’s heart sped up to match. The woman writhed and shimmied in her gauzy garment, tossing her ribbons in her hair, and suddenly cast off the loose outer veil to reveal a thin sparkling scarf hanging down, and two silken sleeves covered in feathers, into which she slipped her arms and raised them up, posing. The crowd roared.

Sylvi, her knuckles white at her seat, was conscious of the sensation of fog blanketing her own thoughts, as if she were sitting in the magician’s hall. She tore her eyes away from the stage for a second to look around, but she knew even before she glanced over the crowd that there was no wizard in this tavern. But then, why couldn’t she think about what was happening on the stage? The smell of spilled beer, food, smoke, and sweat around her somehow seemed to drag in her lungs like the incense that had filled her mind at her bonding ceremony. The woman’s body, smooth and gleaming, was covered in some sort of powder that made her seem to shine.  She tiptoed forward and back in a dance that, like the ribbons in her hair, struck Sylvi with familiarity, yet it seemed profoundly wrong, alien. The scarf now fell away, baring her breasts completely and, as the crowd roared with encouragement and laughter, revealing a bag around her neck on more ribbons, like the – like the ceremonial bags the pegasi wore. The shiny silk bag bounced against her muscled thighs, drawing the eye down over her breasts, between her legs. She raised up her feathered arms – her wings –

Sylvi found herself struggling to her feet, her limbs numb and clumsy. She knocked over her drink, and her neighbour, a tall woman with a weather-beaten face, cursed and jostled her. She was dimly aware, as she staggered out of the bar, of people laughing, pushing her gently or roughly from their path, afraid she was about to vomit on them. She got outside into the cool air, despite the roaring in her ears, the trembling in her knees. It was quieter, behind the bar. She slid down, her back against the wall, her thoughts cascading like a waterfall. Everything seemed changed. At the fairs they had attended, was _this_ in the minds of all those people who stared, yearning, almost touching, forbidden – no, surely not. She thought of her cousin Hon, weeping at the beauty of the pegasi airborne. She thought of Hibeehea, insisting that she and Ebon not share a sleeping space. She thought of their laughing innocence, even as she wished her own misshapen, misfit body away.

It was like flying with Ebon, like seeing a vista open up before her, everything suddenly arranged in a new way, walls and gateways familiar up close now re-forming into a pattern she could almost understand. Redfora and Oraan’s shared, chosen exile. The humming space between the humans and their pegasi, guarded so jealously by the magicians, watched, fortified, which she and Ebon had breached as easily as breathing. Was _this_ what the magicians feared? For the first time, quivering with strange heat, she thought, _are they right?_

***

She re-entered the palace grounds without incident, and went straight to her rooms, exhaustion finally crashing down over her; before she was halfway there, Glarfin swung into place behind her with a look that could have levelled a village. Too tired to care, Sylvi only nodded, and walked the rest of the way with him as her disapproving shadow.

She slept that night, for the first time since that terrible parting, heavily and deeply, with no dreams, and when she woke before dawn, her head felt clear. Thoughts fell into her mind, thoughts she had never had consciously before but fully formed and glowing like Ebon’s stones, as if she had been shaping and polishing them all this time. She reflected for a while; then, for the first time, she sought out that empty space in her mind where Ebon’s voice had been. _Ebon_ , she thought, pitching her mental voice loud, to project, not caring if other pegasi still in the palace grounds might hear. _Ebon. I need to talk to you. Come back._

She kept at it for a while, not really expecting a reply. It was like lighting a beacon, she thought, meant to be seen from far away.

On her way to her office, she filed a request at the palace library to view Fthoom’s evidence.

***

If Ahathin had heard about her period of absence yesterday, he didn’t say anything about it. They worked together closely all that day, Sylvi absorbed, but also humming with expectation, although she couldn’t quite say what of. Soon she would see for herself the account Fthoom had unearthed from the archives of the roc’s prophesy. The whole palace and grounds seemed restless; what activity they could see from their small window seemed hurried, purposeful, and at times they heard footsteps running up and down in the corridor. All that day, Sylvi felt a question waiting to form on her lips, but it would not quite turn into words. She remembered her revelation, _we fear them_. After what she had seen in the bar the previous night, that did not seem quite right; or maybe, her ‘we’ was narrower than she had thought.

Through all her contact with commoners, through proxies and in her own interviews, she had never thought to ask what they thought of the pegasi; but then, she now realized, there must be so much they would never, could never, have told her. Pegasus jokes. Pegasus drinking songs. Pegasus dances. _Why do we not teach the pegasus language in our schools? Why do we not raise our children together?_ Why turn contact between humans and pegasi into _bonds,_ with special rituals and fancy words, for only the elevated families? To keep the number of bonds small enough – and centralized enough – that the few magicians could supervise them all. Why supervise the bonds? To keep them within bounds, of course. To control them. To prevent… what? She looked at Ahathin’s dear face, eyes obscured behind the light reflecting on his glasses, and thought, _What do magicians fear?_

***

The library was surprisingly busy. Even without Fthoom’s ostentatiously busy crowd who had filled up the aisles and desks with their robes and call slips and importance, there was a hum of activity. Familiar faces, students Sylvi had met in passing before, magicians-in-training, healer apprentices, accounting clerks – as many lettered people, she realized, who could be spared – were digging through tomes on rocs, wyverns, ladons and taralians, accounts of old war parties, maps, journals. Her face flamed as she walked to the special desk set out for her with a library attendant standing by, but they paid no attention to her. At first she sat with the dusty book in front of her, barely seeing, then she pulled the threads of her attention together and tried to read.

If she had expected to immediately see that it was a forgery, she would have been disappointed. Of course, a number of experts had already examined it. But as she puzzled through the crabbed, old-fashioned writing, marked with corrections and marginal notes, an aspect of the story struck her which had not the first time. Erex and Tilbad, with their close bond, _managed to kill a roc._ That detail had passed by her at the time, that their combined abilities had achieved what whole war parties had not for over a hundred years. Of course, she was the only one who knew that a pegasus and a human now had the ability to not only fight together, but fight in the air, but everyone had been so focused on her and Ebon’s bond as a _problem._ She sat back, and looked over at the figures bent over bestiaries and the military journals. She was ambushed by the fantasy of walking over and beating the nearest over the head with the book before her.

She turned back to the page. It really was covered in corrections, she noticed. She was curious about that; in many, many places, explanatory notes had been added in the margins, or words had been glossed with near-synonyms. The corrective notes were clearly as old, or almost as old, as the original writing, although she was not expert enough in reading the old hands to know if some were corrections by the author. She wished now that she had thought to ask for the version Fthoom had read aloud in the council chamber. There were places where the word changes were curious; for instance, at the climax of the roc’s prophesy, _the blood and breath of each is poisonous to the other, and the bodies of your two races are dying of it_ , the word ‘races’ – which she was sure was the word Fthoom had used – was actually a marginal correction, while the original document read ‘ ~~peoples~~ ’. Each individual correction seemed innocent enough, but together, she thought, they might point to something, if she could just have time to puzzle over them…

“Your highness,” someone whispered. “Your highness.” A messenger with a white, drawn face. A hush fell over the library and eyes turned towards her. She heard someone whisper her brother’s name, and she staggered up, an icy fist clenched around her heart.

***

It shouldn’t have happened. Danacor was out with a party clearing out a nest of taralians harassing a farming community. They were ambushed by a group of ten norindours. It seemed as if they had known they were coming; the smaller, apparently injured or sick taralians had lured the party away from the settlement, into difficult terrain. Taralians were not thought capable of planning, nor of co-operating with other species, for all the recent reports that the Rocs had unified them. They hadn’t suspected a trick until they were overwhelmed. The last remaining member of the party, a bloody bandage over her forehead, reported all this in a flat voice. Once, Sylvi saw her mother turn her face against her father’s shoulder. It occurred to Sylvi, through the numbness, that the escape of this one person to tell the tale must, too, be intentional; not only planning, but strategy. The confidence to strike fear into their enemy’s hearts, to show their hand in this way, rather than leave them searching for Danacor and delaying the march to the mountains. Looking at her father’s grey face, she saw that he knew it too.

At the end of the report, her mother stood. “We ride tomorrow,” she said. The meeting dispersed. There was nothing else to say. At least, not before the council.

Sylvi walked towards her parents in a daze as the meeting broke up, her brothers with her. In a circle they held each other, Farley and her mother weeping silently, Garren and her father dry-eyed and grim, and she could only think, _Ebon. Ebon, come back._

***

She went back to the library. It was all she could think to do. The research group was still there, hopelessly distracted, whispering together, their notes and books forgotten. One of them, a woman, was crying. From beneath the vast numbness that had settled over her, a spark of irritation flared. Before she knew what she was doing, she strode over to them and opened her mouth.

“My mother marches tomorrow,” she said. They turned and stared at her. She felt her cheeks flame, but where before she would have cowered from their gazes, her shyness seemed to have turned to a hot, hard feeling, like anger. “She will need all your final reports tonight,” she said. “As quickly as you can write them.”

“Your highness Princess Sylviianel,” one of them said suddenly, and they all stood. They hadn’t recognised her at first, she realized. She stood woodenly, feeling foolish, as they bowed. What would her father say?

“Nobody else can do this job, and we need you now. Do you – do you need anything? Food? Tea?”

The woman who had been crying wiped her face on her sleeve. “Thank you, your highness,” she said, her voice thin. “We’ll pull ourselves together. Tea would… tea would help.”

“I’ll see to it,” Sylvi said, slightly stunned at everything coming out of her mouth. She turned to Glarfin, at a loss. His face was as expressionless as ever, but there was something in his eyes that made her feel like she had done something right.

“I’ll see to it at once, your highness,” he said. “Refreshments for the researchers.”

“Thank you, Glarfin,” she said, pulling herself upright. She turned back to them, struck by another thought.

“Now. Which of you has been working on rocs? I would like to read what you have so far.”

***

Later, much later, Ahathin came to the library to tell her, in a dignified, adviser sort of way, to go to bed. Sylvi didn’t protest, but followed him out in silence. Her eyes were dry and hot, and her mind thrashing like an untied rope in a storm. She couldn’t seem to make anything come clear in her head.

At last they were at her room. Ahathin turned to her.

“Sylvi,” he said quietly. “I’m so sorry about your brother.”

Sylvi nodded. Then, before she knew she was about to do it, she opened her mouth.

“Ahathin,” she said, “What do magicians fear?”

He looked at her for a long moment. “Much the same thing that everyone else fears, your highness,” he said. His mouth twisted. “Perhaps to a greater extent.”

“And what is that?”

“Change, of course,” he said gently.

“Thank you,” Sylvi said. She went into her room, and shut the door behind her. She slept as soon as her head touched the pillow.

***

The official presentation of Garren to the Kingdom Sword was very early in the morning, in a quiet ceremony, before the war party was to set off. Sylvi was awake, already dressed, when her maids came to wake her. She refused a gown – everyone else would be dressed to travel, and it didn’t seem right – but let them put a velvet cape over her smartest shirt and breeches. She brushed off any attempts to fuss over her, and for once, nobody tried to overrule her. Her mind felt completely clear, as empty as the sky over the Dreaming Sea, everything sharp and crisp before her. Glarfin walked silently behind her to the Great Hall. When she entered the hall, the sense of sharpness intensified; she was barely conscious of taking her place behind her parents next to Farley. No pegasi were there, and the wrongness was like a wound.

The head of the council spoke a few words, then a magician, then the head of the council again, then her father; Sylvi didn’t hear a word. Something seemed to be drowning them out, something silent, but overpoweringly loud at the same time. She thought that her knees might buckle under the weight of it, but she bit her lip and stood firm; it did not lessen, but grew more intense, like a rising wind, through the ritual. Dimly, she saw Garren step forward towards the Sword on its dais. There was a crack of noise, although no-one in the room flinched but Sylvi, and Garren crumpled to the floor. Sylvi felt her own legs move, without her volition. There was commotion around her, but a path opened up before her directly into that terrible presence. The Sword seemed to swallow up all the light in the room, holding her gaze entirely. _You,_ Sylvi heard it say, in a voice she thought would bring the palace down to its foundations. _Yes, you._

And then she was blinking, holding the sword, swaying on her feet. Someone was shouting. She met her older brother’s eyes, and saw on his face shame, and relief.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, no, it can’t be me.”

And then her knees gave way at last, and she sat down.

***

Glarfin held back the crowd of council members and magicians around them. Garren reached out and squeezed her numb fingers.

“It’s all right, Sylv,” he said, and she saw that his eyes were red. “I didn’t want it, I didn’t want it. Oh stars, it’s awful, but I’m so glad it isn’t me.”

“My lady,” Glarfin murmured behind her. “Can you stand?”

Her knuckles still white around the Sword’s hilt, Sylvi let her help him up. The noise in the room was melting together as her head spun, snatches of speech coming to her from a great distance. _Emergency council meeting… what Fthoom’s faction will… recall her bondmate?... totally untried…_

“Darling,” her mother said. “Sylvi, are you all right?”

“Mother,” she blurted out, looking up at her mother’s face, which seemed very high above her from her vantage point on the floor. She wanted to hide among her mother’s skirts, as she had when she was very small. “Mother, am I the heir?”

“Oh my darling, I’m afraid so,” her mother said.

Sylvi swallowed. _I won’t cry_ , she thought. _I mustn’t cry._ She took her mother’s hand, and allowed herself to be pulled up.

“All right,” she said. Her ears were still ringing with that spectral sound, her whole body vibrating from it. She summoned all her courage and thought at the sword in her hand, _Please, be less loud, I have to concentrate now. You’ve got me into this mess, so don’t leave me to stagger around like a drunken fool. I want to do my best, but I can’t with you yelling at me like that._

For a split second she was conscious of a sort of blankness, like astonishment; then, the pressure on her mind lessened, with an aftertaste like amusement. _Thank you,_ she thought, weak with relief, and nearly dropped it as her white-knuckled grip on the hilt loosened.

“All right,” she said again. “I suppose there’s an emergency privy council meeting? Let’s go, then.”

“That’s my brave girl,” said the queen.

***

“… apart from anything else, she can’t possibly join the war party,” Lord Barnum said. His upper lip was shining with sweat.

They had been at it for two hours, and all it came down to was, the Sword had chosen her, whether or not anyone liked it. There was precedent for it, and no less than three separate councillors had repeated the story of the end of Lortel V’s line when the Sword rejected all three of his sons in favour of a cousin. It tended to happen – as all three councillors had said – in times of crisis, or war. But nobody knew what it meant, this time, and people wanted to decide what it meant before the pegasi were informed. But the pegasi had to be informed _now_ , because the war party was about to leave, and the heir traditionally took the battlefield while the king stayed to govern. But Sylvi was sixteen. And short.

“I can fight,” she said, but nobody heard her. Lord Barnum turned to shout down Senator Orflung, who had said something about delay. Sylvi looked around. Her mother was staring at the wall, probably pretending she was somewhere else. Her father was watching her. She looked back at him, hoping for some guidance. He shrugged a little, as if to say, _it’s out of my hands._ Sylvi took a deep breath.

“My Lord Barnum,” she said loudly. He turned around. “Do you think I can’t fight?”

He looked at her incredulously. “Your highness,” he said, with exaggerated deference. “No doubt the Sword has chosen well, but surely you must admit –”

Sylvi pushed back her chair, and stood up. She walked into the center of the council chamber. Everyone had fallen silent. She looked back at her father again, and thought, _I hope I’m doing the right thing._ Then she thought, _they have already taken so much away from me._ She drew the Sword, and held it before her in the position of readiness that had been trained into her since she was twelve.

“Glarfin,” she said. “Attack me, please.”

Glarfin had watched her in the practice ring for years. His discipline didn’t break; he didn’t hesitate. He drew his sword and came at her with a textbook overhand strike which looked impressive, but which he had seen her deal with many times. Behind her, Barnum yelled, and several councillors gasped, but as she had counted on, it happened too fast for any of the other guards to stop him. Sylvi parried his first thrust, and his second, sparks flying from the Sword as it met an inferior blade; he was deliberately using heavy, standard strikes, the kind a larger, dull opponent might use against her who didn’t know what she could do. She ducked under his third slicing cut, whirled around and caught the back of his knee with her heel. With an exclamation, he fell to one knee, and, continuing the movement, she brought her blade down toward the back of his neck. She almost didn’t pull the blow in time; the Sword was heavier than her practice blade, although only a trifle heavier, and she had the strangest feeling that it _wanted_ her to cut him, it wanted blood. As it was, she nicked the back of his neck, a line of red appearing just above his collar. Glarfin didn’t flinch. She raised the sword slowly, and laid it on the table in front of Barnum. She was pleased to see that he shrank back from it.

“I trust it won’t be necessary for me to do that again,” she said. “Swordmaster Diamon can vouch for me. As can General Ptarth. I intend to take on the duties of the heir starting now. The kingdom requires nothing less.” She wasn’t quite sure where those last words had come from. But from the silence that followed them, she thought they had been all right, even though her cheeks were flaming.

After a delicate pause, her father cleared his throat. “Well,” he said. “Any other questions?”

***

The council need not have debated over whether, how, and when they should inform the pegasi of Sylvi’s new status. As the council were leaving the chamber, a messenger came directly to her father and whispered something to him

“Council members,” he said, effortlessly projecting above the hubbub. “An embassy awaits us in the Great Hall.”

Swept along in the crowd, distracted by concern for Glarfin, who had a handkerchief pressed against the back of his neck but otherwise was as expressionless as ever, Sylvi did not fully absorb what her father had said until suddenly they were back in the Great Hall, and the pegasi were before her in all their glory, a deputation with Ebon and Lrrianay at their head.

 _I’m here_ , Ebon’s voice burst into her head, urgent with fear and joy, and so beloved that it took all of Sylvi’s self-control not to throw herself straight towards him, _You called, I’m here, what’s happened?_ Only the fact that she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry stopped her from doing one or the other and disgracing herself.

_Oh Ebon, I’m glad, I’m so glad –_

Fazuur, her father’s Speaker, obviously summoned at the same time as the council and looking deeply uncomfortable, translated as Lrrianay signed, _We heard a call, and we are here._

 _I heard you calling – well, I didn’t_ hear _you exactly but I knew you needed me_ , _and I told father we had to come,_ Ebon rattled away in her head, _I knew you wouldn’t call unless it was urgent, and they were preparing to leave to fight the rocs anyway, and they wouldn’t let me come but I followed them and then they discovered that I was with them, and father was so angry, then we stopped at Three Springs for a drink and heard about Danacor, so we thought we’d better come right in, dearheart, I’m so sorry –_

“We are grateful for whatever chance or greater design brings our allies are here in this troubled time, without our sending,” her father was saying, slowly and carefully, giving Fazuur time to keep up. He was translating more accurately than usual, Sylvi noticed, maybe, she thought, with a stab of anger, because this was all happening so suddenly that the magicians hadn’t had time to decide how to control it. “You have heard of our great loss. Know now that the Kingdom Sword has chosen as our heir our fourthborn, Sylviianel, bound to Ebon.”

Even in the tumult of her emotions, Sylvi had to admire the cleverness of it. Here, in the Great Hall, where she and Ebon had been bound, with the memories of her Choosing immediate and visceral and the Kingdom Sword still at her waist, the council could be awed into acknowledging their bond again.

There was a shift among the pegasi as Fazuur translated, and Ebon took a step forward and back, his pinfeathers twitching. _What?_ Ebon said urgently in her mind, _What did he say, I can’t – did he say you’re going to be Queen?_

_Oh, Ebon, it’s such a mess, I’m the heir, but hush, for goodness’ sake, until we can talk properly!_

She could feel the effort it took him not to canter across the room to her, to behave.

“We acknowledge the unanswered questions provoked by the document unearthed by the magician Fthoom, now barred from the court for his abuse of the trust we placed in him,” her father continued, as kingly as she had ever seen him, “But the dual signs of the Sword’s choice of Sylviianel and the unexplained summoning of our allies convinces us that the bond between Sylviianel and Ebon, son of Lrrianay, cannot be against the interests of the kingdom, chosen as they have been by our oldest protective enchantments. As we march out together against our common enemies…”

Sylvi caught her breath as she realized that her father had implied that the _Sword itself_ had summoned the pegasi back. He hadn’t said so, but it was a neat conclusion, even if he might suspect otherwise. Certainly no-one knew that she could call Ebon over such distances. She hadn’t known it herself until just now. _Ebon, he’s suggested to the councillors that the Sword called you_ , _make sure your father understands_ , she said urgently, one eye and ear on Fazel, who had stumbled over translating that. She lost the thread again, watching the faces of the councillors. Some looked relieved; some looked worried. A few looked angry. But it was going to work. Ebon would be allowed to stay. Her father finished his speech with a flourish, and Fazuur translated it with a few last, rather peremptory jerks of his hands.

Her father raised her arms and looked towards her, and Sylvi felt the faintest nudge at her shoulder as Glarfin pushed her forward. She walked towards her father, not knowing what was expected, and Ebon, apparently experiencing something similar, walked towards him too.

“We are delighted to pronounce Sylviianel and Ebon reunited,” her father said, and, bewildered, Sylvi found him looking at her, eyebrows raised.

“Wel- welcome back, excellent friend,” Sylvi said, “We are…” she looked at the councillors, her mother, the pegasi, and abruptly gave up on trying to attempt a speech. There was too much to say, too much that would have to remain unsaid. “We all have a lot of work to do to make the kingdom safe. We’re already behind schedule but if we leave within the hour we can probably still get to Bluewater before we have to set camp. Shall we go?”

She saw her father’s mouth twitch, but as Farzuur translated, her mother immediately began issuing orders, and the councillors, some obviously cheated out of speeches they had been mentally composing, were hurried out of the Great Hall.

 _That’s more like it,_ Ebon said approvingly. _Less of this human chattering, more speed._

 _Oh Ebon,_ Sylvi thought helplessly, _I’ve missed you so much._

***

It was not until they were encamped outside Bluewater, messes formed, meals cooking over campfires, and perimeter guards set, that Sylvi thought she might be able to see Ebon privately; but then there were planning meetings, maps to pore over, couriers to send back and ahead. She saw her mother looking at her sympathetically several times, but she did her best, aware at every moment how much they must be missing Danacor, who had trained for this for years, who knew all the generals and had fought alongside the soldiers. It felt terrible to be trying to fill his shoes, and not even being able to miss him properly; she still felt as if he would ride into camp at any moment. And the ache inside her that she and Ebon had barely exchanged a word since he’d returned was almost unbearable.

At last, her mother called the meeting to a close, and signalled Sylvi to follow her.

“I’m going to pay my respects to Lrrianay, and to check that he and his people are comfortable,” she said, a little loudly. Everyone could hear them, Sylvi realized. There are no secrets in camp life, she remembered her mother saying once; at least she and Ebon could speak silently. Her heart pounding, she followed, with Glarfin her shadow.

“I didn’t have time to say earlier,” her mother murmured, “But I’ve never been prouder of you than when you nearly decapitated a man in front of that old stick Barnum. I’ve never seen him so terrified.”

Sylvi reached forward and took her hand and squeezed it, glad it was too dark for her mother to see her face.

“I hope you thanked Glarfin,” she continued. “You risked his life two ways, you know; if he’d hurt you, he would have been executed.”

Her words were gentle, but Sylvi winced. She hadn’t thought of that.

“I’m not criticizing, dear,” her mother said. “I think they were nearly as impressed by his response as they were by your fighting. They hadn’t thought of you as someone who could command that kind of loyalty.”

Sylvi felt very strange, and said nothing else until they reached the Pegasus tents. Glarfin had heard the whole conversation, of course, but he would never have acknowledged it.

The pegasus encampment was enfolded within the human one, but was distinct from it, with a three-walled shelter and space to move around, unlike the narrow alleys between the soldier’s tents. Some pegasi were flying ahead, scouting tomorrow’s route by the light of the three-quarter moon. The others gathered around the queen and Sylvi. Ebon was not there.

“Go,” she whispered. “I can give you fifteen minutes. Glarfin will stay here.”

Sylvi slipped out and ran toward the shelter. Angled away from the campfire, it was dark inside, so when she threw her arms around Ebon’s neck it was like embracing a silky shadow. Ebon’s presence felt full and alive inside and around her, and he made snuffling noises against her shoulder that she would have teased him about, if she hadn’t been weeping wholeheartedly into his mane.

 _Never again,_ he murmured as he gentled her, and she twined her fingers into his hair and held on for dear life.

 _Never,_ she agreed, as he pressed his nose against her hot, wet cheek. _Never, ever._

Her heart beating in her throat, she turned her head against his and took a lock of his mane in her teeth. She tugged it gently, and he made a sound in his throat that she had never heard, low and almost pained.

 _Of course you’d wait for_ now _to do that,_ he said, after a moment. She could hear that he was laughing. She felt dizzyingly grown-up, suddenly, and was almost frightened by it.

 _I didn’t know_ , she said. _Ebon, is it – is it all right?_

He nuzzled at her throat, his breath tickling, but so that she shivered rather than laughed. _I don’t know_ , he said. _I guess we’ll find out together, won’t we?_

 _Yes_ , she said. It was easy, after all, to talk about this. Nothing more needed to be said. She buried her face in his neck and held on to him, held on to that promise between them, until she heard her mother calling, and left him.

***

They had little enough time to talk, after that. The attacks on the train came thick and fast all the way to the foothills, small roving groups of taralians and norindours – none so many as the group that had killed Danacor and his band, but still enough to tax them – and, once, a wyvern who took a man’s arm before they killed it. But they fought together. All the work they had done flying together, and the time Ebon had spent watching her train, came in to its own now. They could talk, of course, but they barely needed to; more than ever, they were two halves of a whole. They knew almost without thinking where the other would be, what the other would do. Sylvi would sweep low with her blade at a ladon’s belly as Ebon’s small, sharp hooves would beat at its face, and as Ebon came down onto all fours again, Sylvi would be gone, up and out of the way, whirling again on their bewildered foe. Far from keeping them from danger, as Sylvi had feared, they were so effective that General Ptarth and her mother nearly came to blows over where to place them for best strategic effectiveness.

Late into the night, she took part in planning meetings, and had the satisfaction of seeing copies of her reports passed around for the sergeants. She would fall onto her pallet exhausted every night, and usually would not hear her mother come in, even later, before they both dragged themselves up again in the morning. She came to know her mother in a new way, in that time; impatient and sometimes awkward in the council chamber, in the field, her mother was every inch the commander. Sylvi saw what she asked of herself, how hard she worked, and how everyone around her, seeing that, redoubled their efforts; Sylvi’s trust for her was no longer the blind trust of a girl for her mother, but the trust earned by a leader from one under her command. So when, one night, as they lay in the dark tent, her mother said, “Sylvi, we need to talk,” Sylvi’s instinct was not to hide, but to share.

The candlelight flickered in a slight draft through the tent, throwing into relief the lines on her mother’s face.

“I haven’t wanted to burden you with this,” she said. “But your father is under pressure to remove you from the war party.” Sylvi took a sharp breath, but her mother held up her hand to forestall her. “Let me finish, my love. Fthoom’s faction pulled themselves together after we left. I think you and Ebon are some of the best fighters we have, and it’s a foolish waste to send you back. But I heard that prophesy too. I don’t know what to do, Sylvi.”

For the first time, Sylvi heard the anguish in her mother’s voice, and was struck dumb.

“I’ve already lost one child,” she said. “Am I risking the loss of another and endangering the kingdom in the process? I can’t believe that your bond with Ebon is a curse. But…”

“Mama,” Sylvi said, her eyes filling with tears.

“Do you have any insight? Anything you haven’t told us?”

Sylvi took a deep breath, and looked at the shadows playing on the canvas of the tent. She thought about speaking Ebon, but it didn’t seem right, when her mother couldn’t hear him.

“I think,” she said, “that the roc was our enemy, and if he was telling the truth, he told part of it, or told it badly. And I think that whoever wrote it down, wanted to interpret it a certain way.” _That closeness is a wound, and the blood and breath of each is poisonous to the other, and the bodies of your two races are dying of it._ She told her mother about the way ‘peoples’ had been changed to ‘races’, and that Fthoom had read out the latter.

“How does that change the prophecy?” Her mother was frowning, but not in disapproval.

“ _Races_ are the bodies of the people,” Sylvi said, her words tripping over themselves as she explained at last the idea that had been growing in her since they left the palace. “ _Peoples_ are the… I don’t know, their souls, maybe. It’s who the people _are_ , their customs, their ideas, their art and songs and buildings. The pegasi and humans aren’t literally poisonous to each other. The alliance isn’t making us sick. But the alliance, the way it was built, was designed to keep us as separate peoples, as close as possible to how we were before we met each other. And that’s… wrong. It’s dangerous to constantly be relying on people we don’t know. It makes us distrustful and stupid. It makes us afraid of the ones we fight alongside with.”

Her mother nodded slowly. Sylvi licked her dry lips.

“The way me and Ebon are to each other… we’ve changed each other. And that’s how it will be, if we carry on. We won’t be the same peoples that we were. In a sense, a closer alliance _would_ destroy our peoples. Because we’d both change, do you see? Maybe we’d become one people.”

_What do magicians fear? Change._

Her mother had a strange look on her face, that made Sylvi feel that dizzy, fearful grown-up way again. She said nothing, but reached out, and touched Sylvi’s cheek.

“I think the Sword knew what it was doing when it chose you, my darling,” was all she said.

She extinguished the candle, and they lay in the dark together on their bedrolls.

“There’s something else,” Sylvi said. This was easier, in the dark. “Do you remember when I had all those bruises? And I told you I was sleepwalking?”

“I have a feeling I’m not going to like this.”

“We were flying,” she said in a rush. “We can fly. Me and Ebon. We’re really good at it. And I think I know how we can kill a roc.”

“… oh dear,” her mother said, weakly.

***

When the first roc finally blotted out the sun above them, all the secret planning with the generals and all the tests she and Ebon had done to find the lightest possible combination of armour and weapons seemed meagre preparations in the face of something so massive. Sylvi was fumbling at a buckle with numb fingers when larger hands took it from her and cinched it tight.

Glarfin’s face was impassive, as it always was. Sylvi felt a swell of affection for him.

“Listen,” she said, taking Glarfin’s hands in her own, ignoring his look of alarm. “You’ve been the best… I don’t deserve…”

“My lady,” he said, gripping her hands and squeezing them once before releasing her. “It has been an honour to serve you. And it will continue to be so, after you and he kill that great monster up there.”

Sylvi could hardly feel her face, but she thought she managed a smile. She ran from the tent, and found Ebon already at the assigned point, waiting for her. He was shifting with impatience and excitement. _Well?_

_Let’s go._

They had a plan. Brought to the ground, rocs were vulnerable, but bringing them down was the difficulty. Pegasi, even with little blades strapped to their hooves, as had been attempted a few times, did not have much fighting ability in the air. The information compiled around rocs had suggestions for their points of weakness that might be exploited by an aerial fighter; in particular, the tendons under their wings. Some ticklish, exciting experimentation with Ebon had yielded some suggestions of where those might be. They could not waste their opportunity; they had to wait until the roc was fully engaged with ranged attacks from the ground. And so, under cover, they waited.

 _Tell me something,_ Ebon said, agitation thrumming under his skin as the sounds of battle began far off, and the huge roc’s talons descended once, twice, down towards the ground. It was terrible, not being able to see, but imagining the devastation. _Anything. Distract me._

 _I have this idea,_ Sylvi said, rubbing his flanks to gentle him. _A sort of… school. Or an institute. Halfway between Rhiandomeer and home, just on this side of the Starclouds, outside of the enchantments. Where the shamans could come without forgetting, and humans could learn to speak. And soldiers and pegasi can train to fight together so we can defend the borders properly. And you won’t have to all come to us all the time and be lonely in the palace. And you could do your sshasssha there, and artists and engineers and philosophers who want to know about pegasus ontologies and whatnot can come._

With the words, she shared images with him, images that appeared in her head so vivid and fully formed that she wondered if she were imagining them herself or if they were being sent to her from somewhere else. Human and pegasus children in classes together, like her and Ebon with Ahathin. Buildings in the vicinity of the institute built by human and alula-hands with light, pegasus lines, open to the sky. Instead of stairs there would be low, smooth ramps, and where there was any inside at all, the corridors would be two wingspans wide, with no polished floors for hooves to skid on. Magicians would be there, magicians like Ahathin, who didn’t want to control, but to understand. And all around, pegasi and humans walking side by side without a cage of rituals and interpreters. Learning from each other.

Another bond like theirs might not come for many generations. But when it came again, she thought, in the world she and Ebon could build together, that future pair might not have to keep their love a secret.

 _We’ll change everything_ , Ebon said. She leaned against him so that all of his glad strength could hold her up. _Together, dearheart._

 _Of course_ , she said. _Always._

A trumpet sounded twice from the battlefield.

 _That’s us_ , Ebon said. _Let’s go kill a roc._

Sylvi swung up onto his back. His muscles rippled beneath her, and she reached out to stroke his mane once. The Kingdom Sword hummed at her side, its presence heightened, sending staticky energy up and down her spine.

 _I love you_ , _Excellent Friend,_ she said.

 _And I love you, shining warrior of the air, queen of heaven,_ he said.

 _Future queen_ , she reminded him. She felt him laugh in her mind as his hooves beat the air down and they took flight, soaring upwards into the shadow of the roc’s wings.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my amazing beta, Wychwood, who sat on IM with a copy of the book in front of her as I was like WHAT'S HER BROTHER'S NAME? WHAT ARE THE MOUNTAINS CALLED? HOW DO YOU SPELL HSSHAHSHSHSHSHSAA? And helped me out with the plot. Thank you so much, Wychwood. You're the best.


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